1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to collaborative computing and more particularly to collaborator polling in a collaborative computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Collaborative computing refers to the use by two or more end users of a computing application in order to achieve a common goal. Initially envisioned as a document sharing technology among members of a small workgroup in the corporate environment, collaborative computing has grown today to include a wide variety of technologies arranged strategically to facilitate collaboration among members of a workgroup. No longer merely restricted to document sharing, the modern collaborative environment can include document libraries, chat rooms, video conferencing, application sharing, and discussion forums to name only a few.
A collaborative computing application enjoys substantial advantages over a more conventional, individualized computing application. Specifically, at present it is rare that a goal of any importance is entrusted and reliant upon a single person. In fact, most goals and objectives can be achieved only through the participation of a multiplicity of individuals, each serving a specified role or roles in the process. Consequently, to provide computing tools designed for use only by one of the individuals in the process can be short sighted and can ignore important potential contributions lying among the other individuals involved in the process.
Personal information managers, project management systems and workflow management systems represent three such computing applications which attempt to manage a process leading to an objective, leveraging of the participation of many individuals in the process. Calendaring systems have formed the core component of personal information management software and firmware applications for decades. Initially, a mere calendar display, modern calendaring systems provide scheduling and alarm functions in addition to full integration with contact management, time entry, billing and project management applications. The typical calendaring application minimally provides a mechanism for scheduling an event to occur on a certain date at a certain time.
Several software products include support for Calendaring & Scheduling (C&S). Known C&S products include Lotus™ Notes™, Microsoft™ Outlook™, and web-based products like Yahoo!™ Calendar™. These products allow one to manage personal events including appointments and anniversaries. C&S products also typically allow one to manage shared events, referred to generally as meetings. Electronic Calendaring and Scheduling software allows a group of people to negotiate around the scheduling of a proposed event such as a meeting, with the goal of selecting a time that allows most of the group to attend.
Negotiating the scheduling of a meeting in a C&S system represents a species of the larger collaborative task of negotiating a result to a poll. In the former instance, the poll is the specific case of proposing a meeting time. In the broader context, a poll can be a proposition soliciting a selection or information in general from a designated group of collaborators. Presently, managing responses to a poll entails the use of a single, shared document passed from collaborator to collaborator. As each collaborator “votes”, the aggregation of votes can be persisted to the single, shared document and other collaborators can be permitted access to the document. Other solutions include the use of customized applications which can be time consuming to produce and manage.
Collaborator non-responsiveness remains a central problem identified within the collaborative environment. Specifically, though the collaborative environment provides a substantial tool to facilitate collaboration, in the end, the success or failure of collaboration turns on the willingness of collaborators to participate in a timely fashion. As applied to polling, the ability to arbitrate a poll results depends heavily upon the initiative of polled collaborators to locate the shared document and provide proposed results. To the extent that a collaborator engages the shared document only once, the polling results will represent an aggregation of static choices absent dynamic changes in preferences owing to the polling results of other collaborators.